Essendon coach Brad Scott said the MCG communications blackout that left the Bombers without access to statistics and unable to call the interchange bench from the coaches’ box midway through their Anzac Day loss to Collingwood was ‘as helpless as I’ve felt’ as a coach.
Wet weather in Melbourne left Essendon at a ‘significant disadvantage’ at a crucial stage of the third quarter, with technical problems at the venue forcing the Bombers and the AFL to resort to drastic measures.
The Bombers took the lead amid a stirring comeback midway through the term, but gave up five of the next six to the Magpies to eventually succumb by 41 points.
However, they were severely impacted after the rain ‘sparked out the communications’ at the MCG, according to Fox Footy’s Jon Ralph.
It was initially reported that Collingwood were spared the same difficulties, though it was later confirmed their equipment had similar issues.
“Chaos down here for most of the third quarter,” Ralph said.
“Collingwood had full communications, Essendon had very little, so they weren’t able to access their stats or their vision boards. They were able to communicate with the box, but it has been chaos.”
Commentator Garry Lyon said the issue ‘certainly doesn’t help’.
“That’s a really interesting development there, given that they kicked the first two goals [of the third quarter], got themselves out to a lead,” Lyon said.
“If that’s when communications went down… it certainly doesn’t help.”
“It is disarming the coaching in this game a fair bit,” co-commentator David King added.
Jason Dunstall, meanwhile, called for an alternative approach such as ‘back-up walkie talkies’ to be used.
“There’s got to be some system in place so that one team’s not disadvantaged,” he said.
The outage left the AFL scrambling, with both the Bombers and Magpies given dispensation by league football operations manager Laura Kane to use two extra mobile devices each until the tech problems were resolved.
“I’ve spoken to the AFL bench official here and they’re in uncharted territory,” Ralph said.
“Normally, of course, given the integrity concerns they’re not allowed to do that [use mobile phones], but that was granted to them.”
The issue was fixed for the final quarter, with the AFL confident neither team was given a major advantage or disadvantage.
Ralph also reported that the Bombers were unable to look at vision of potential injuries – including an ankle concern for utility Harrison Jones, who was subbed out of the game at three quarter time.
“It’s a significant story here,” he said on Fox Footy.
“Thankfully they’ve had that communication restored, but even looking at some of the injuries – like we saw with Harry Jones, they wanted to see the mechanism of that.
“It’s been a significant disadvantage for the Essendon Football Club.”
Speaking after the match, Scott said the blackout was ‘pretty frustrating’.
“It was pretty old school – we just had to get the mobile phones out,” he said.
“That’s as helpless as I’ve felt in a quarter of footy, when we can’t communicate to the bench.
“Every time I went to go down to the bench, they said ‘it’s back on’ – and then they came back off. We couldn’t work out what was going on, but from what I hear we weren’t the only ones.”
However, Scott refused to blame the issues for the Bombers’ defeat, crediting the Magpies’ more experienced playing group for handling the difficulties better.
“I wouldn’t make too much of a deal of it, personally. It sounded like it was both teams. Certainly no excuses, that’s for sure,” he said.
Magpies coach Craig McRae, who unlike Scott typically coaches from the interchange bench, said his only instruction following the blackout was to ‘be calm’ and allow the players to ‘drive the car’.
“When you’ve got a group that’s performing, you’ve got to get out of the way sometimes,” he said.
“The great Leigh Matthews taught me way back: when there’s a big ‘snowball’, he used to call it, going down the hill and picking up more momentum, get out of the way of it.
“I’ve certainly been trusting these guys. They know what to do in the moments. So when that happened, I said ‘just relax, we’re OK, we’ve got this, let the players be’.
“We give them the keys. They drive the car really well at the moment.”
The win keeps the Pies locked on top of the ladder, while the Bombers sit 12th with a 3-3 record.
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